windthread

singing while sleeping

Music Thursday at the Old Folks Home.     I got there a little late,  the battery on the truck was dead, so changing vehicles around took a little while.   Alz. B's son was there and Alz B.  was sleeping.  Dead Asleep.  So i hauled over a chair and began singing into her skull.  I don't know all the songs so sometimes it's just da daaa da da in stead of words but the melodies are ease to intuit.  So i put my mouth against her temple and sang into her head.  In no time,  without opening her eyes,  she began to sing.   and i realized that what she was doing was 

Scat Singing.

which according to wikipedia is vocal improvisation with wordless vocables,  a difficult technique that requires singers with the ability to sing improvised melodies and rhythms using the voice as an instrument rather than a speaking  medium.   Ella Fitzgerald is considered the greatest scat singer in jazz history.  Alz B might be next.  She did harmony,  she did rhythm,  she kept the beat and kept the temper of the song being sung.  Some old Celtic,  some Johnny Cash,  some Neil Young,  some i don't know,  but she was ON IT.  She HAD IT GOIN.  oh, yes.  until she fell  totally back to sleep for the last two.

and just to be sure because he is going to be gone for two weeks again and she seems somehow more frail,  more thin of spirit,  like they say in chinese medicine and acupuncture,  like the envelope of her heart is thinning...  i had her son check again that all is in place in case she dies in his absence.  Well,  sort of,  but not quite,  but now it's all good.  I am official all around and can go forward with advance directives both at the Old Folks Home and the Funeral Home that will come to retrieve her when she's gone.  I can sign off papers,  identify the body,  agree to advance directives.   So.  All is in place.  It appears that she is going through kidney failure.   And if we  get that far, they will call me and i will go,  and i will sing into her skull a little and then do other things that i have learned to do.  So, we're set.  OK.  and OK.

and early today, before i left i got an email from  Thunder Bay, Ontario.   What a Bright Gift it was...someone who has been reading and decided to respond   "out loud"  because of the reference to the Sorel boots....she too had goats once upon a time and tried to milk before work in the winter in her own snow mobile boots.   And i KNOW Thunder Bay,  on the Canadian side of Lake Superior and near Isle Royale where i used to go because of the Wolves there.   What it felt like to receive word from Thunder Bay....word saying i look at your life, we are sisters.   So all the sometimes concern i have about being boring....i thought....no....if she had a blog and just told things like what was on sale at the grocery store there,  i would BE THERE  for it,  i  would WANT to know...I would LOVE to know...

out of the Blue it was THE DAY to take down the Magic Diaries Cloth and the plastic under it and  expose the windows there,  that are so DIRTY and need to be washed...maybe tomorrow .....or not,  but now i have to SEE them  and all that was on that door counter,  OFF and sorted and given up or not 

and a new order for this While.

just now...Thunder Man again...another STORM.   Last night a huge STORM  so much direct hit lightning and i realized how precarious it all is...how easy it would be for the Elements to Take us Out...easy...but we remain....holding on....so far.

 

so am looking at this cloth.  Someone asked about the blue color and i tried to go back and find that comment but i couldn't.   the Blue color is there sometimes and sometimes not,  depending on the time of day,  the light...    And i look at this cloth which to me is talking about this Monsoon season....the response of the Atmosphere with the Earth......according to its own necessity or maybe even whim?   We can't know.   So we receive.   as Annie Dillard said...we "receive the given with a fierce and pointed will".   Yes.   Lightning is Here now.  Off.  OK.

 

 

 

 

for Tay

all that is left is her Moon eye.   maybe the most important for last.   But for her,  as a gesture of Claiming her.  a gesture of Willingness,  of commitment.   So.  OK.

Gifts

 

Thrift Shop.  It was 10 cent Tuesday and so, crowded.  Hot.  Crowded so i gave  up the Hunt quickly upon finding these.   The first,  a pair of SORELS!!!!  and i don't think they were ever worn.  I think they are a boys boot...because they're relative small but wide.  If they were a woman's boot they would be narrower in the toe.   These are roomy.  They will be PERFECT for those cold months,  getting up to light the wood stove,  going out to break ice on the water, feed the Goats.  These boots are probably close to $100....but as it is,  10 cents.

And then this really oh so Great shirt,  a thin thin thin soft soft soft cotton shirt that is an XXXL size and so on me,  the tails go to the knees.   I cut off the collar....debating about the cuffs....but it is perfect for those moments during the dark of night when i wake,  sleeping naked,  and want to spook around for a while.   Covers all that needs to be covered but is so so light.....and a beauty Full pale blue...like the Moon.........so when i am Outside,  Moon will recognize me

But...................Look.   Look what has arrived.   The print from Jane Bregoli.     The print on canvas somehow that she knew was possible

 

and the timing could not be more perfect.   I am at a little of a loss about how to think/feel about the Goats.   and having this here,  having Noelie Houle  and her  best Goat  Anna here,  i  will  find my way.   Noelie was ninety-two when Jane painted this picture.   The original oil painting is 7 FEET X 4 FEET   and privately owned.

and she sent me some cards and postcards of the images from the book and this one that was not in the book but that i love so much...i want to find this Energy that she so much Holds...i need this.

and to make it all that much more of a Celebration of Goodness,  Maria emailed me this photograph from her garden....this bouquet,  which i think is flax,  her hands holding it..uncut,  growing and Alive....

How much better could anything BE?....  i think not any.  This is just a very FINE FINE day....

 

 

 

 

the treasures

work away day but before i left,  this scrap of seam presented and i looked forward to getting back home and taking it apart.  

 

 

 

 

some response between the cloth, walnut, iron pot and oxidation.   i like it.

 

early this morning.  i like the shapes.

a SUNday

this is James Fortune.  He is my granddaughter's great grandfather.  She has his surname,  Fortune, along with her married name Ortiz.   The tendrils travel far and wide.  Today James Fortune died.  Granddaughter had traveled a month or so ago from California to Michigan to see him.  She says she is his Favorite.  Maybe,  but maybe such a man made all  of them feel they were the Favorite.  Here in New Mexico,  it's called consentida.  The special one.  She grieves.  i don't know any of that part of the family except for her father when he was 19 years old.  The one who impregnated my daughter, Gary.    Gary who died at age 19.   But she does.  they are Family.  and i find self thinking about this tonight.  Family.   How we choose to keep family or not.  She chooses Yes.  And she travels across the country to keep the blood flowing.  She grieves tonight.    I think, tonight.  Her son, Julian,  almost 5 years is with his father in New Jersey.   and with a HUGe  Puerto Rican family there with tons of Aunties.  I don't know any of them either.  Only his father Mike.   so, I think about this too.   

 

a tribe of Harvester Ants has set up housekeeping in this crack in the middle of the walkway.  All day they are BIZZY,  like Bizzy,  bring things.  I read about their underground world they build and think of it,  under the main walkway here.   It's hard to be Care Full not to step on any of them.

 

this one can go now.  Will put into shop.

 

with the encouragement from Michelle,  i worked on the 4th leg.  Wasn't easy.   All the rest just Happened.  but to add that 4th leg...well,  it took all day.  The  Tension needs to be right.  I think this is ok.   Will wait.   Till tomorrow, look again.  but i think it's good.

 

 

 

 

context

thinking a lot about context.  and how i don't provide it.   How the context for things is in my mind as a running commentary but when i put things here,  i put them without context.   Part of that is because i write these things at the End of Days when i am uhhhh,  quiet of words, for the most part.  But am wondering if that is a good idea.

 

i won't know, until i have finished here,  if what i can see in the Picasa file is also seen here.   

ADDENDUM:    Yes.  if you double click,  you can see it.  Do you see it?....the Dimension of this web??????   How so totally Astounding that it is seen this way...........it's not "nothing"....it's Very Much Something Amazing....the dimensions that it truly IS.   How can i see this and not just be totally blown away?   How can i see this and not be on my knees stunned?

 

the Light.  and under the Light is one of the Orbs.   There is no explanation for these.  They are Phenomenon.  They are Real also.  so...Real Phenomenon.   And i have been thinking how i just see them,  in the pics i put here.   Just kind of acknowlege their existence ...and leave it.  Why?  Why do i just leave it?   Thinking about this.

 

 

 

these are tears...tares...tears in the curtain that is just in front of me as i sit at this computer everyday.    I look at them a lot.   Admire them.   And i am thinking of the Weave of the fabric that is a Curtain.  I like this a Lot.

 

Things go Well with Tay.   we come to know more about EachOther.  
We come to learn what is necessary here.

I think of the term Familiar.   Just thinking of it, right now.  Familiar.  
She is a Familiar?

and What Context would i put that in?   Again...context.

Loose ends

some loose ends i want to go Back to,  Touch and tie in.  But not tonight.  The day was Big enough.

Am sitting here naked in the heat.

This truck sort of belongs to me.  Sort of.   It's title is in my name,  i pay the insurance.  But it still lives at the Old Cowboy's house.  As long as he is there.  But today i drove it to pick up the stove.

 

Here we are.    The first stove i have ever bought.    In all my 68 years.  First stove.   There is 

Simmer.

 

Simmer,  on all four burners.  Simmer.  The first time for Simmer in maybe 20 or more years?  How so Great is this?    ALL four burners work.   How so Great is That?   a Luxury,  beyond Luxury.   In an email Marti points out that i name my vehicles and she thinks i should name the stove...she thinks i should name this sleek stove.....Sabine.   And so it is.  Sabine.  ok.  and yes, ok.

i watch the water tonight.   How it flows from the hose.  Watch it.  Closely.

day

day   Tay    Tay day

I figured out what it is about her,  about her herself and her Here.  It's that everything is NEW.  to her.  and because she is such a Huge Energy,  every thing is also new to all of Us.  and so,  We are New.

We are New.

the cloth that was forgotten in the Walnut vat

 

 

new ground cloths.  Tea and Onion skin

 

and.................Word from the Love Letter.  You may remember, we last saw her on the dock in Florida.   Well.   Here we are today...she is kayaking on Spruce Creek.  Just as Karen said she would be.

 

 

 

i look.  i look long at these emailed photographs.   I close my eyes and "see"  the cloth i made, remembering stitching this Cloth...remembering touching this Cloth.   And then i envision this...this Cloth on the tip of the kayak....Spruce Creek...the sensual fullness of it.  How exquisite this is.  How so totally amazing.   Feeds my understanding of How Things Are.

 

Dogs.   What exactly are Dogs?

language...speaking...hearing...understanding...maybe not with words

" Is it possible to grow a worthy cosmology by attending closely to our encounters with other creatures, and with the elemental textures and contours of our locale?   We are by now so accustomed to the cult of expertise that the very notion of honoring and paying heed to our directly felt experience of things...of insects and wooden floors, of broken down cars and bird-pecked apples and the scents rising from the soil...seems odd and somewhat misguided as a way to find out what's worth knowing.  According to assumptions long held by the civilization in which I've been raised, the deepest truth of things is concealed behind the appearances , in dimensions inaccessible to our senses.  A thousand years ago these dimensions were viewed in spiritual terms: the sensuous world was a fallen, derivative reality that could be understood only by reference to heavenly realms hidden beyond the stars.  Since the powers residing in such realms were concealed from common perception, they had to be mediated for the general populace by priests, who might intercede with those celestial agencies on our behalf.

In recent centuries an abundance of discoveries and remarkable inventions have transformed this culture's general conception of things...and yet the basic disparagement of sensuous reality remains.  Like an old, collective habit very difficult to kick, the directly sensed world is still explained by reference to realms hidden beyond our immediate experience.  Such a realm, for example, is the microscopic domain of axons and dendrites, and neurotransmitters washing across neuronal synapses...a dimension entirely concealed from direct apprehension, yet which presumably precipitates, or gives rise to every aspect of our experience.  Another such dimension is the redondite realm hidden within the nuclei of our cells, wherein reside the intricately folding strands of DNA and RNA the ostensible  code and perhaps even "cause" the behavior of living things.  Alternatively, the deepest source and truth of the apparent world is sometimes held to exist in the subatomic realm of quarks, mesons, and gluons (or the still more theoretical world of vibrating ten-dimensional strings);  or perhaps in the initial breaking of symmetries in the cosmological "big bang" an event almost inconceivably  distant in time and space.  

Every one of these arcane dimensions radically transcends the reach of our unaided senses.  Since we have no ordinary experience of these realms, the essential truths to be found there must be mediated for us by experts, by those who have access to the highpowered instruments and the inordinately expensive technologies (the electron micropscopes, functional MRI scanners, radio telescopes, and supercolliders) that might offer a momentary glimpse into these dimensions.  Here, as before, the sensuous world....the creaturely world directly encountered by our animal senses ...is commonly assumed to be a secondary, derivative reality understood only by reference to more primary domains that exist elsewhere, behind the scenes."

David Abram in   Becoming Animal      An Earthly Cosmology

Beginning this book again.  Watching over and over the BBC and Nat Geo documentaries of the Wild Dogs of Africa on U Tube.  Watching these Wild ones.  Now, looking at Dogs and Goats.  

and this morning,  beginning to ready the cloth to ship out,  i am caught by this "solar flair, flare" and see how it is WEAVE.   Considering Jude Hill's Considering Weave,  i look and am taken by it.  I did not weave anything,  but this small fragment of a piece of Deb Lacativa's dyed recycled damask is really,  maybe the central point of this Cloth?  it and the small black and white wisp that to me is Animal.  All Animal,  including me.  Animal,  looking UP... Continuing...in it's own small but singular way....
So...a Delay in the sending.  I need to look for a while more.  Need to understand the place this small weave has in this Big Picture.  Need to really take that in and understand what i can of the beingness of cloth,  how it is woven into what we just take for granted as cloth,  but is really,

Weave.   

 

.....~,,,.....~

first.....

 

a correction.  I got an email from Hilda who lives in Willard, NM which is just as much in the middle of nowhere as this is,  maybe even more,  and Hilda is who helped me identify the HUGE grasshopper last year as a Lubber.  Hilda pointed out that this is NOT lavender,  but rather Russian Sage.   And i Laughed,  because somewhere down the line, a long time ago i knew that,  but had just kept referring to it as Lavender in my mind until,  well,  i guess,  it became Lavender.  But it's NOT.  It's Russian Sage.   THANK YOU HILDA!!!!   I love how even tho i might not have a clue,  things are being kept track of here and noted and ....cleared up.  Smile and Happiness.

and then

i received a very nice note from Sue at Colourmart saying that this COBWEB silk is no longer offered as it was not a popular weight.  How WonderFULL was that...a response overnight even tho it wasn't what i'd hoped????????????????   so, ok.  don't know now what.   

 

 

Tay BARKED during the night and i got up....turned the "porch light" (for what it's worth, not much ) on...it looked like this

Finished.  Ready to mail.

 

and i realized that it wasn't at all the White at the very top edge.  I really like that a LOT.  it's like Clouds.    But rather it was the moment of transition from the blue to the orangyyellow.  So.

and for a while,  i'd had the feeling that there was something on the Rolodex that was important.   I had seen something on TV many years ago,  MANY,  about Wild Dogs of Africa.   And i remembered, prompted by the Rolodex that somewhere around was a National Geographic i had kept about them.  The Nat Geo did not refer to the thing i saw on TV which was overwhelmingly touching and difficult and BEAUTY FULL,  but it was what i had.  So i hunted it down.

 

 

 

and there are HUGE differences,  the first being that the Wild Dogs of Africa are not dogs at all but an individual species that we see as dog like.  And two,  i don't mean to romantisize Ta y.  She's a dog.   But she has behaviors that take me back to these Beings....the mouthing,  the pack intensity,  the long stick like legs interwoven with bodies, heads and legs.   I see what i was looking for...that if she could have it Her Way,  we would be like this.  This pic above which is how the pack CELEBRATES  at the end of the day....  

and it helps me with understanding what i am asking of her when i say No Bite,  No Feet!   How i am asking her to stop expressing something that is very strong inside her that has total different meaning to her and to me.